Parents want to do what’s best for their children, but there is confusion about what is best. Dr. John S. Hutton recommends:
- Read picture books for at least 15 minutes a day with your child. Longer is fine.
- Start shortly after birth. With infants, reading is not about learning the ABCs or even understanding the story. It is about establishing the routine and starting a dialogue.
- Keep children away from phones, tablets and other screens, including TV, before age 2. The one exception is video chatting with loved ones who are far away, but not until 18 months.
- Phone and tablet apps are easy to carry and to use, and marketers promise learning benefits. But those apps have not been studied and shown to work. “Reading, by contrast, has been well studied,” Hutton said. “We know it works, but it is just kind of oldfashioned.”
- For toddlers, limit screen time to an hour a day.
- Keep reading with children even after they start school and after they can read themselves.
- Don’t use screens to pacify children. Children are learning to handle their emotions and control their reactions. “They need practice, and if they’re constantly soothed with devices, they are short-circuiting this process and their ability to handle their own stuff. They don’t learn to regulate their behavior,” Hutton said.
- Keep screens out of the bedroom, where they tend to lead to later bedtimes and disrupt sleep, homework and reading. “That’s one of worst places for screens to be. Anything that disrupts sleep causes all kinds of trouble.”